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ABOUT THIS IMAGE:

This infrared view reveals galaxies far, far away
that existed long, long ago. Taken by the
Near Infrared Camera and Multi-object Spectrometer
aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the image is
part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field survey, the
deepest portrait ever taken of the universe.
This galaxy-studded view represents a "deep"
core sample of the universe, cutting across
billions of light-years.

This infrared image offers a slightly farther look
into the universe's past, compared with the snapshot
of the same field taken in visible light by Hubble's
Advanced Camera for Surveys. Astronomers used
Hubble's near-infrared camera to find very distant
galaxies that cannot be seen in visible light. The
light from remote galaxies has been stretched from
visible to invisible infrared wavelengths by the
expansion of space. Some light also has been
absorbed by intergalactic hydrogen.

Astronomers are hoping to strike it rich by finding
some of the farthest known galaxies, existing perhaps
400 million years after the big bang. To find them,
astronomers must combine the infrared and
visible-light images. The remotest galaxies will only
appear in the infrared image. If discovered, these
record-breaking galaxies may offer clues to the
emergence of galaxies when the universe was only
2 to 5 percent of its present age.

The Ultra Deep Field observations represent a narrow, deep view of the cosmos. Peering into the Ultra Deep
Field is like looking through an eight-foot-long soda
straw.

In ground-based photographs, the patch of sky in which
the galaxies reside (just one-tenth the diameter of the
full Moon) is largely empty. Located in the constellation
Fornax, the region is so empty that only a handful of
stars within the Milky Way galaxy can be seen in the
image.

This composite image was assembled from exposures taken
by the near-infrared camera and the advanced camera.
Astronomers incorporated the advanced camera's
visible-light observations into the image to better
discriminate the colors of the distant galaxies. The
near-infrared camera observations were taken from Sept. 3
to Nov. 27, 2003.